


Movie Night

by eleutheria_has_won



Category: The Underland Chronicles - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Teenagers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-03-30 06:25:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3926254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eleutheria_has_won/pseuds/eleutheria_has_won
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And thus began the tradition of movie night.</p>
<p>"I feel that Ripred would label this a misuse of the skills he has taught us."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Movie Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fictionalcharactersandtears](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=fictionalcharactersandtears).



> "Prompt: Luxa watching a //movie. Please imagine this with me. Just do it."
> 
> Oh, I’m imagining it :D It might have taken on a life of its own.

”I feel that Ripred would label this a misuse of the skills he has taught us,” Luxa said dryly. Near-utter darkness or not, Gregor could just imagine the look on her face. From Howard’s amused snort and Sixclaw’s giggle, so could they.

“Does that mean you want to be the one to tell him?” Gregor retorted, grinning briefly when the lock finally clicked open and the heavy door - labeled “Employees Only” in a large, no-nonsense font, almost invisible in the darkness of the alleyway - swung open with a low groan. 

Luxa snorted and pushed past him onto the narrow metal staircase. “Do not be ridiculous. We will be late if you do not hurry.”

Gregor traded a glance with Lizzie (who rolled her eyes in a very “I told you so” way), then snickered, “Yes, ma’am,” and followed her up the tiny stairwell. Behind him, he could hear the rest of the group - consisting of Howard, Lizzie, and Sixclaw (Flyfur decided to stay behind this time) - trotting up behind him, bickering softly among themselves.

Less than two floors up, the metal stairs fed out into a positively tiny walkway, lined above and on either sides with pipes and bundles of electrical wiring. Panels of metal behind the pipes and wires lead to further crawlspaces. The five young teens, pre-teen, and rat picked their way across what looked, in the soft glow of emergency lights, like the inside of a Gordian knot, careful not to tug on anything that looked like it might unplug on the other end.

Glancing back, Gregor saw it was a tight fight for Sixclaw, but _she_ was luckily done growing; Gregor, on the other hand, was already having to squeeze through sideways in places and there was no way in hell _he_ was done. When he started grumbling about it, Howard, who had long since reached the point where  _every_  fit on this route was a tight fit, just laughed at him. His reply, when he’d stopped laughing, was something along the lines of “know my pain.”

(Lizzie, the little brat, wasn’t having any trouble at all.)

As they went, Luxa tapped wall panels and muttered under her breath. Pausing, she frowned.

“How many panels was the number?” she called over her shoulder. 

Sixclaw called back, “Which theater was it? The fourth or fifth?” 

“Fifth,” Gregor said absently.

“Then it’s the fifteenth panel down and on the left.”

“My thanks,” Luxa said absently and kept going. Three panels down she stopped and pivoted left, as instructed, reaching into the dense cluster of wires to find the edge of the fifteenth panel. “Some help?” Gregor leaned forward and found the other edge; together, they pried the metal panel from its setting to reveal another, shorter (but luckily wider) ventilation duct.

“Everybody in,” Gregor said, ushering the rest ahead of him. Sixclaw and Lizzie were laughing softly as they passed him, already excited for the movie, while Howard eased forward in the lineup to strike up a quiet conversation with his cousin. Once Sixclaw had gotten herself inside the duct, Gregor followed. 

Ahead of him, there was a clang as Luxa pushed the first grate out and a thump as she followed it into the room below. “It is clear!” she called softly. There were more thumps, great and small, as Howard followed, then Lizzie (by the muffled curses, Howard hadn’t gotten out of the way in time; Gregor snickered and felt Sixclaw’s laughter as vibrations through the vent,) followed up by Sixclaw. She landed with far more gracefulness than the rest of them, which frankly wasn’t fair.

Gregor dropped down last, and found the rest of the group already setting themselves up in the small projector room. When he glanced out through the room’s windows, he found that the intro credits were already beginning to roll. Sixclaw opened the smaller windows with a flick of her tail. That would let them get decent sound.

Gregor traded a wicked grin with the thin black rat and settled himself down between Luxa and Lizzie. The former leaned against his shoulder and smiled, eyes on the screen, when he put an arm around her, while the latter bounced in place and giggled in his ear, tugging on his other arm. Howard was on Luxa’s other side, reclining against Sixclaw, who snorted and flicked at his ear with her tail, but let him do it all the same.

The “movie of the summer” started, for them, in a rush of giggles and whispers and “Shhh, someone’ll hear us! It’s starting!” The room was almost perfectly dark.

(If that meant their friends and relatives couldn’t see them kissing every so often during the boring parts, Luxa and Gregor had no complaints.)

\- - -

Lizzie burst out of the Employees Only door with a shriek of glee (repressed only by the necessity of secrecy while they were in the vents), and spun on her heels. “That was so  _cool!_ “ she gasped.

Sixclaw shot out after her. “When the giant robot used the sword-“

”-to chop off the tail-“ Lizzie babbled back, and the two fell into their usual rapid patter. Howard strolled out alongside them with a smirk that totally denied any rumor that he had cried when they’d thought the hero was dead. (He totally had.) 

Gregor and Luxa tumbled out last, Gregor pushing the door shut behind them as an after thought, laughing breathlessly and stumbling after their buddies. 

"I didn’t even notice,” Luxa gasped, bent over with an arm around her stomach, “I didn’t-”

“It was, though!” Gregor laughed back, “The scientists, they were you, you and, and Ripred, the year after you bonded, you know it’s true.”

“It’s true, it’s true!” Luxa laughed and collapsed against him in her fits of giggling. 

“Just imagine,” Gregor giggled, “You and Ripred in a robot together.”

“Oh, oh,” Luxa gasped, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes, “I can not, do not make me imagine that, it would be disaster.”

“Exactly!” Gregor burst out, grinning when that made her gulp, try to suppress it, then fail and double over in renewed snorting and giggling.

“What…what  _time_  is it?” she snickered eventually. “Howard?”

"It is three hours after midnight,” he called back over his shoulder, smirking at them as they tried to catch their breath. 

“No wonder we’re, we,” Gregor snickered helplessly, winding down. 

“No wonder at all,” Luxa agreed as solemnly as she could manage, which made them both snicker just a bit more. “Thank you, though, for a wonderful time,” she said after they’d both caught their breath. “That was a very entertaining movie. I much like this Movie Night, we will need to repeat it.”

 ”Glad you liked it, and I’d be happy to oblige,” sighed Gregor cheerfully, taking the offered manhole cover from Howard so that Luxa could climb down. The manhole would eventually take them back to the Underland; it was the only way for them to move around the streets safely. If holding the manhole cover meant that Luxa had to climb down before him, well...

“You are too kind,” she said wryly. (The sewers smelled about like you’d think they would, the unfortunate price to pay for secrecy.) Gregor just grinned cheesily at her. She stuck her tongue out at him, but started down the ladder after Howard anyway. Gregor sketched a bow to her, and she snorted.

“All in a night’s work, my lady,” he said, stepping down after her and pulling the manhole cover back over the hole overhead.

(And thus was born the tradition of Movie Night.)

(Ripred totally disapproved.)


End file.
